Dublin-based IT company Pace Software is hoping to build tie-ups between Irish companies and the Indian software community for developing software products. Pace plans to encourage Irish companies to go in for parallel software development in India without getting into the nitty-gritties of actually setting up a facility and making huge investments.

When it farms out the development requirements to teams of programmers, Pace would assist them in setting up and managing software development centres in India. This would enable European companies toconcentrate solely on development. Pace would be handling the investments, running the facility and managing it for a certain fee. The client would retain the option to purchase the facility when it has reached a sufficient size and level of maturity.

Pace Software director (operations) Tadgh Crowley said top Irish software companies such as Iona Technologies and Trintech have committed to take this route to product development and open facilities in Pune through Pace Software. Pace has started operations in India by setting up the Pace Software Institute Ltd in Pune. The development facility will be set up early next year.

Pace is looking only at European companies which are into product development. The transition to parallel development would be carried out in two phases, explained Crowley. Initially, Pace will help recruit Indian software engineers and deploy them at the client's development site for a year or two. This will be followed by the trained engineers moving back to India and continuing towork for the same European client from Pace's software development facility in Pune.

Crowley said there is great potential for Irish and Indian IT companies to work together. As Irish companies have no domestic market they have to export and this calls for global marketing, sales, distribution and support mechanisms. It is this need which Irish companies hope to fulfill with set-ups in India.